From: Dick.Gray@bull.com
Date: Tue Dec 15 1998 - 10:06:32 MST
Samael asks: "If everyone has access to something, it 'belongs' to all of
them, yes?"
No! "Access" is not what defines property; property means right of
_control_. I can own something but still grant access to everyone. The
converse doesn't hold under the usual definition of property.
Further:
>Maybe I'm stretching the word belongs a little bit there, but I presume
you
>can see what I'm trying to say.
Yes you are, and not just a little bit; and no, I can't quite see what
you're trying to say. Maybe I'm a little obtuse this morning, I've only had
three cups of coffee. :-)
But let me take a stab...you seem to be implying, by turns, that a) nobody
owns anything, or b) everybody owns everything. Of course, holding both of
these propositions at different times makes your position incoherent. But
let's address each by itself and see if either of them stands up to reason.
I think (b) is easily disposed of as either involving a self-contradiction
or reducing to meaninglessness. To belabor the point, how could it be that
everyone in the world has exclusive title to control any specific thing,
let alone everything? Even if we relax the tension by omitting the
condition of exclusivity, we have everyone potentially vying for control
all the time. If we retain exclusivity, the problem is worse. Somebody has
to make the decisions. Somehow things have to get allocated in some
reasonable manner. How? In practice (if any society were foolhardy enough
to try to practice it) it's pretty clear that the situation would
immediately resolve itself into some system of entitlement, no matter what
they (or you) chose to call it. State "ownership" is not equivalent to
common ownership, since it implicit assumes the property "rights" of the
power structure.
So we're down to (a). Obviously this is the original "state of nature". But
how can it be maintained and permit anyone even to survive? If you, for
instance, pick and eat an unowned fruit, you're immediately "guilty" of
appropriating the fruit and making it your property (control can't get much
more exclusive than digestion). So it's a tort just to live, if you're
correct in forbidding property. Obviously this is untenable.
We're left (by elimination) with the necessity of property (title to
exclusive control). Now we can argue about how property is legitimately
acquired, but we can't consistently reject the idea of property itself.
Dick
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:50:01 MST